Page 154 of Elven Shadow

With the clock ticking on Rebecca’s life, though—and no way to know how much longer she would survive with one steadily dying arm and almost no energy of her own left—Maxwell’s determination felt like a death sentence.

And she couldn’t even plead her case, because no one could know she needed her own Bloodshadow magic to heal herself.

No one could know shehadBloodshadow magic.

Waiting for her outside her room was bad enough. When Maxwell shoved her aside at the common room’s refreshment table and snatched her freshly doctored cup of coffee from her hands to give it a tentative sniff, her frustration only deepened.

Then he did it again with her tray of food offered through Bor’s kitchen-service window with a brusque grunt and a scratchy, “Roth-Da’al,” from the old cook, and Rebecca wanted to shove the tray of hot breakfast in Maxwell’s face.

“Dammit, Hannigan,” she snarled. “Are you gonna be this far up my ass forever?”

“Only if you insist on taking your meals down here with everyone else.”

“Why? Because the last guy used to do it in private where no one could poison him and get away with it?”

There was still no hint of emotion, no amusement or irritation, when Maxwell answered her. “Among other things.”

“You realize that if anyone here’s likely to poison me, it’syou, right? Doesn’t make you the most trustworthy poison-tester.”

He said nothing.

Her stubbornness refused to let her switch up her normal routine just to escape him, which only made the morning worse when she took a seat at one of the common room’s tables to eat her breakfast.

No one had watched her muchbeforeshe’d been made Shade’s new commander. That probably wouldn’t have changed even with the new title.

But with the Head of Security standing over her table, mean-mugging every other member of the task force who so much as dared to look Rebecca’s way?

That turned the whole thing into a spectacle.

Which meant she ate her breakfast—as much as the nausea would allow—with her face flushing hot and her hands clammy under all the attention and a rising swell of anger boiling in her gut.

And the whole time, she was certain Maxwell was eating this shit up like candy.

He’d found a way to get on her nerves without actually doing anything wrong. Worse than that, he had no idea his decision to tail her like this pushed her closer and closer to the edge of panic and desperation every second.

Panic and desperation were the surest ways to fucking up.

She had to get away.

He left her little to no viable means of doing so.

When she left the common room, anyone she tried to talk to got turned away by Maxwell’s possessive presence. Anyone who might have tried to talk tohergot instantly turned away by the aggression in the shifter’s stare, or a warning growl, or an interruption every few seconds to correct their misuse of properly addressing their Roth-Da’al until the other person just gave up.

Most of them took one look at Maxwell hovering behind Rebecca and took off in the opposite direction instead.

It was more than just hovering, though. She couldfeelhim there, complete with the almost undeniable urge to spin around and attack him any way she could, just to get him off her back.

Worst of all was that some other, evenmoremessed-up part of her imagined the shifter watching her for different reasons, sizing her up, getting the kind of up-close and personal inspection that was only possible when two people were stupidly intimate with each other.

Insanely, infuriatingly, deliciously close like this…

By the Blood, when did physical injuries start screwing with her ability to focus on what was actually important, not to mention possible?

And with Maxwell still standing right behind her at every moment, it was impossible to get her mind off him.

Even retreating to her office on the second story didn’t ward away her shifter shadow.

By the time she slumped into the office chair behind the enormous desk, the numbness in her left arm had spread three-quarters of the way toward her shoulder. The handprint around her wrist now made her flesh look more like a gray marble statue than living organic material.

---